


Green Body Pink Soul

by Guardian_Rex



Category: Ben 10 Series
Genre: Ben and the omnitrix have some fun dream adventures, Magic, OC, dream shit, literal ascension to higher planes of existence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 09:10:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11250039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guardian_Rex/pseuds/Guardian_Rex
Summary: Ben and Gwen Tennyson are 1/4 annodite each.  Both have the touch of Life in them.  Ben now has access to literally every living form in the galaxy, possibly the universe.  The cousins find themselves being visited by a strange dream, and with the knowledge they've agreed to learning, this summer will definitely be an interesting one.





	Green Body Pink Soul

After a quick shower and change into his undershirt and boxers, Ben flopped onto his bunk of Grandpa Max's RV, feeling exhausted and satisfied. He had cool alien super powers, he saved the day, and he was gonna be doing stuff like that all summer! Sure, Ben preferred not to have killer alien robots coming after him and putting everyone in danger, but as long as he and his grandpa and even -eugh- Gwen worked together, there was no way anything bad would happen. Well, nothing terrible. They could make it, easy. With that comforting thought, Ben closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. For a while, it was just darkness, that state of unconsciousness when the brain was shut down to only the essential involuntary actions, and everything else was turned off. It didn't last for as long as it probably should have.

Sparks of bright green flashed across the field of darkness and Ben spun around in confusion. Soon he was surrounded by green and the sensation of being submerged in water. Strangely enough, panic didn't sink it's cold claws into his mind, an instinctive calm settling over the ten-year-old as he observed his surroundings. There were tiny spots of black around him, but for the most part, he was surrounded by green. The longer he stared, the brighter it all became. Looking down, he was surprised to find someone else there. They were wearing loose pants and a jacket, gray tones mixed up with bright pink. The eyes of his company were a vivid viridian, and their smile showed off a few too many teeth for them to be human. Ben waved to the seemingly human thing, and they waved back before floating up next to him. Weirdly enough, there were no other distinguishing features to the person's face. Their nose, hair and everything else was vague and hard to make out. The only thing he knew for sure was that they had a lot of teeth and weird green eyes.

 **Green's not too weird an eye color. It's yours, after all.** Ben blinked and looked left and right, spinning around to try and find where that sound was coming from. Blinking, he realized that it come from the guy in front of him, and raised a brow. A three part harmony from one mouth was weird, but when it came from everywhere at once instead of just from that person's mouth, it was freaky. **Sorry, that's just the way I talk when I'm in someone else's head.** Ben did a double take of the sea of green around them and the being nodded. **Yeah, this is your head. I took the liberty of bringing us to the representation of your preconsciousness. Think of this like the in between of when your brain is almost entirely shut down, and when you start dreaming. Interesting that your head is so much like the primordial sea.** Ben's shoulders slumped, and he let out a huff. He didn't need some weirdo in his head using a bunch of big words to give him a headache in his head. **I think you used the word 'head' a few too many times in that sentence. Don't worry, I'm not here to confuse you.**

Ben furrowed his brows for a moment before squinting at the stranger. Minutes passed, and the other laughed. **I'm not going to turn into a banana because you want me too, Ben. We're not quite in a dream yet, so it doesn't work like that.** The ten-year-old hero groaned and flipped onto his back. The other followed suit, now beside him. **You're waiting for me to tell you why I'm here like some dramatic comic book character right?** A nod from the Tennyson and the older looking person rolled their eyes with a grin. **Not even gonna ask me my name? That's just rude, little man.** Ben glared and punched the person on their shoulder. They laughed and shrugged. **Not an insult, just an observation. You're like, ten. But anyway, my name is an unlockable surprise. For now, call me Stase.** Wasn't that a- **A name is a name, regardless of whether it's placed to a boy, a girl, or someone in-between. Besides, you can't tell my gender so what's it matter to you?** Admitting that it was a good point, Ben shrugged and rolled over so that he was laying down and staring up at Stase.

 **Onto my monolog about why I'm invading your brain space, right? Well, I'm here because you are a very special boy and I feel that every hero needs a mentor. I'm going to be helping you figure your aliens out, one by one** . Well crap, that sounded too good to be true. There had to be a catch to a deal like that. Ben wasn't in the mood for reading boring books in his own head. **Nothing like that, though I'm glad you caught the whole 'nothing is free' part of this offer. You'll find out what my price is later. For now, just learn and be the hero that you've always wanted to be.** That didn't sound like the best deal in the world - find out the price later - but Ben was smarter than his cousin gave him credit for. He knew a great opportunity when he saw one.

Holding out his left hand to shake on it, Ben looked down in shock. His arm wasn't his own. There was pale flesh like usual, but at the elbow that became crystal that melded into fur that burned at the tips of his fingers. His composure broke, and the boy screamed out in alarm, filling the green sea with his panic. The calm waters churned with the emotion and Ben's vision swam into a blurry mess. A sharp _snap_ resonated throughout the hadal of green and everything returned to a vivid, lifelike focus. Everything but Stase' face. **You can't see much of my face because I don't want you to, Benji.** Looking down at his arm again, Ben was relieved to see that it was his own again. **It never stopped being yours, Ben. No matter the form, you are still you. And within each form of yourself, there are memories to rifle through. Let's begin where you did, shall we?** Ben looked up in time to see Stase's form vanish. Their grin had widened into that of a predator that had captured the best prey. Their eyes had gone from a simple green to emerald torches lighting the darkness that fell upon the boy.

Ben cried out in pain as the new source of light in the darkness was his left hand. The flesh burned with pain as his blood turned into boiling napalm, racing up his arm and lighting his body ablaze. The liquid fire pumped throughout his body, and the boy's screams were drowned out by the roar of the flame he had become.

* * *

 

The last thing she remembered was showering away the grime of a chaotic night and heading to bed. At no point in-between did Gwen recall entering a pink and white void. Shadows flickered behind the flares of white before being swallowed by the light, and the young Tennyson floated around aimlessly for a while. A flash of orange appeared in the distance for an instant before vanishing and leaving her alone once more. **I wouldn't say alone, personally** . Looking up, at least for her, the ginger spotted a person clothed in dark greens and common grays. Their eyes were bright magenta, their mouth turned up into an open smile that revealed canines too sharp and long to be human. Other than that, their face was hard to make out, the tone of their skin shifting with every blink. The person appeared to be standing on solid ground, staring directly ahead, even though from her perspective they were looking down at Gwen and floating horizontally. **Perspective is an important aspect of life, you know.** Their voice was off too, coming from everywhere when their lips moved, and almost as though three people were speaking in perfect unison. **It's sometimes difficult to make out finer details in a dream, Gwen.**

' _A dream?'_ Her own voice echoed around her as though resonating against the walls of a cavern, even though there was nothing but her and this person for miles. ' _Does that mean I can control what happens here? Most of my dreams are a bit more eventful.'_

The person shook their head and chuckled. **No, unfortunately. Lucid dreaming takes practice and an open mind. You lack one of those things.** It was hard to tell whose position changed but Gwen was now floating parallel with the foreign being. **Been quite a day for you, hasn't it? Discovered that aliens are real, put out a forest fire, watched your cousin transform into three different things, broke an alien machine, saved some people. It's quite a bit for a kid to go through in only one night.** They folded their arms behind their head. **It's interesting that you recognized me as an outside force when I told you this is a dream. Excellent intuition.**

' _Like I said, I have more interesting dreams than a pink void.'_ Gwen crossed her arms with a raised brow, trying to mask her confusion and fear as an inquisition. ' _So who are you?_ ** _What_** _are you?'_

 **I hardly think I need to list psychic in the answer since we're floating in your preconsciousness.** They tapped a finger against their arm, glancing up at another orange flare behind her. **Think of me as a concept given life. You know what homeostasis is, correct?** She nodded, though if her guess was correct, she didn't need to. **I am that, but for the whole universe. You can call me Muir.** Mu-ear? That wasn't even a real word. **Neither is Gwendolyn, but I don't judge your mother for that name, do I?** Point taken. **You may be wondering what someone like me is doing in your dreamland.**

' _Is this some deal with the devil that's about to be offered?_ ' Gwen crossed her arms, glaring at the being. ' _Because if it is, I'm not interested. And don't even_ ** _think_** _of offering it to my cousin either.'_ The pink light flared up around her and Gwen's skin even gave off a bit of luminescence.

 **My my, even as a ten-year-old you're a terrifying force, Gwen.** They chuckled and waved a hand. A table appeared between them, gray, wooden, plain.  A point of reference if it was fixed in position. **I'm hardly 'the devil' Gwen, I'm not nearly as much of an over achiever as Lucifer is. I** ** _do_** **have a deal for you, though.** She wasn't going to take the deal, she could already tell. **Don't go denying before you've heard me out.** Muir sat down, and Gwen wondered when the chair had appeared. **I want to teach you a new language, no more and no less.** They paused, and Gwen sat down just as they added **for now.**

' _A new language?'_ Gwen tilted her head in consideration. She wasn't sure why she didn't just say no right off the bat since she was dealing with an unknown being of psychic power that could melt her brain. On the other hand, she was still fine as far as she could tell. Her mother told her never to decline a good offer for knowledge and Muir wasn't acting exactly hostile. ' _Why do you want to teach me a new language?'_

 **Let's say I'm invested in your future.**  Muirfolded their fingers together and hummed. **You can probably imagine that your cousin has some weird stuff coming for him in the future, right?** That was obvious and unavoidable, weird stuff had already come for him. **Well, I've seen how this road leads without me, and frankly, things could have gone better. Your development has an effect on that.** How would learning a new language help her develop towards changing the future? After all, words were just words, right? **That's hilarious. You'll see, in Time. Only if you say yes, though. Say no, and I leave you alone, and this will be but a summer night's dream. Say yes, and I'll leave you with a book and some basic instructions.  The first of which is to ask your grandfather about a woman named Verdona.**

Muir held out their hand over the table, warm orange sparks dancing around it like flames. Gwen stared at it and let her thoughts drift in and out. They were offering knowledge and said that it was because the future would be brighter if she had it. They were also literally holding out a flaming hand to go with the offer, and likely mocking her comment about a deal with the devil. If she accepted the lessons would they ever stop? If she wanted to stop learning from them because she discovered something about them, would Muir allow Gwen to stop the lessons or would she have to give up the knowledge that she put so much time and effort into gaining? **Yes, I'm mocking you with this but it also looks cool, and if the lessons were mandatory then I'd have simply started them by now. If you want me to stop teaching you at any time, I'll stop and leave you with just the book and the knowledge you've already learned by that point.** They were reading her thoughts, lovely. **That's something that should have been obvious by now.**

Gwen sighed, likely a pointless gesture in her own head, and stared at Muir's hand for what felt like forever. Finally, after counting ten flares of orange light in the distance behind Muir, she took their hand in hers. ' _I'll learn from you for now, and see where it all goes._ ' She shook their hand, and they grinned as the orange light and her own pink radiance mixed together for a moment.

 **Excellent. Now, the first thing we'll cover is this simple fact. You are not dreaming, you are comatose.** The lights around them spiked to a harsh white. **Calm down, Gwen, you're fine. However, the only way to teach you during your resting periods without taking from your rest is if I put you in a temporary coma. Proper dreaming takes up so much energy that you're practically awake.** The whites dimmed down, and Muir's features returned to somewhat focus. **Excellent. Now, for the real first lesson**.

* * *

 

When the sun rose, the first to blink his eyes open was Ben. For a few moments, he lay in bed processing the blur of emotions and sensations of heat rising from inside and consuming his very being. The finer details were blurry, and he didn't remember everything. All he knew was that he was Ben, he had superpowers, and he owed JT and Cash some revenge. After a quick shower, the last of his rice krispy bar, and some clothes, Ben twisted the Watch around a few times and slammed it down when he spotted a dinosaur silhouette. His skin turned blue, his fingers merged into sharp talons, his skull changed shape, and Ben grew several feet taller.

Moving around a few times outside, Ben felt a grin spread across his face and chuckled. "Oh yeah," he rasped in the strange voice that came with his new form. "This is perfect for showing up JT and Cash." In a blue blur, he was off to Bellewood.

 

When Gwen woke, it was as though she had pumped a can of soda directly into her blood stream. She was awake and alert as soon as her eyes opened, and felt as though the world was just a bit closer to being right, even though she had never felt any personal problem with how it was before. Gwen got to her feet, stretched in every way she could think of, and opened up her bag to find some clothes. Instead of clothing, the first thing Gwen saw was a book with at least four hundred pages and bound in pink, white and black leather. The letters on the front were bold and clear, written both in English and in what Muir called Matiro.  The Words of the Fae.  “This is the book from my dream… so it was real…”  Gwen grinned at the realization, stuffing the book back into her bag before grabbing some clothes.

After her shower, Gwen cracked open the book and found the first few pages after the table of contents to be a listing of the alphabet for this strange language.  Pulling out a notebook of her own and sitting down at the table, Gwen got down to studying for herself.  "If I can replicate it verbally and textually, I can figure the rest of it out faster than Ken is learning Spanish."  When she wrote the letter A, Gwen looked back to the book for reference to the Matiro character, she tilted her head in confusion at the strange pink light that the ink radiated.  "How is it doing that?  Is there some kind of photorefractive ink that this was written in or is it just a trick of the book like holographic images?"  Turning the page and looking at it from behind yielded no results as the light seeped in from the front.  Gwen didn't stop turning and twisting the book around until she heard her grandpa getting up to start his own morning routine.

When Max came out from the bathroom in his usual blue slacks and floral pattern shirt, ready to cook some exotic dish from another culture, Gwen was sketching down the first half of letters and mumbling the names of them under her breath.  She looked up with a smile and waved.  "Morning Grandpa."

"Mornin Gwen.  Did you sleep well last night?"  Grandpa went about checking on their supplies for the trip, not noticing the giant grin on Gwen's face.

"You could say that.  I had some pretty weird dreams after all that weird alien stuff last night."  Technically not a lie, so she was all right saying it.  "I hadn't planned for aliens in my summer schedule, but I guess I also didn't plan on going on this road trip either."  She shrugged, going back to her practicing.  "I'll just have to make the best of it and get a bit of the self-directed learning I had planned in between the episodes of weirdness."

"So Grandpa Max?"  As Gwen and her grandfather packed away their gear from the campsite, a thought from her nocturnal lesson occurred.  "Do you know anyone named Verdona?"  The elder tensed for a moment, and Gwen raised a brow when met with silence.  "Grandpa?"

"Sorry Gwen just surprised me is all," Maz said quickly, covering up his pause by lifting the grill into the winnebago.  "That's the name of your grandmother, Verdona Tennyson."  He came back with a box to put more things away in and arched a brow at Gwen.  "Why do you ask?"

"I heard the name somewhere and couldn't think of a face to place it to."  Gwen hefted her box onto a table with a grunt and turned to face her Grandpa.  "How come you don't ever talk about grandma?  I've always wanted to know what she was like."  Max worked silently for a while, and Gwen's poker face dropped into concern.  She opened her mouth to apologize, but was thankfully interrupted.

"Your grandmother is still alive, for one thing."  Max sighed, sitting down for what could turn into a lengthy discussion.  "And I never really talk about her because Verdonna hasn't been brought up in any conversations with you or Ben before.  She is a free spirit, full of life and always doing whatever it was that she wants to do.  Verdonna and I had a long and happy relationship together, but once Carl and Frank were out of the house, she decided to go back to her roots."  Max stared up at the cloud-dotted sky with a wistful smile.  "Haven't heard from her in a long while."  

Gwen nodded, filing away the information for later and got back to work.

“Gwen, have you seen your cousin?”  Max looked around the campground for any footprints that’d match a petrosapian, pyronite or vulpamancer.  Nothing newer than last night on all three, though there were a few light wheel tracks.  “I haven’t seen him all morning.”

“His stuff was thrown onto his bed, so he’s probably out in the woods messing with that Watch thing.  Who knows what he turned into this time?”  Gwen knew that Ben has dramatic timing, usually for stupid pranks, but the dust cloud that appeared along the dirt path out of the park after she put down her box felt ridiculous.  “Speak of the devil.”

A small velociraptor, maybe 5 feet and ten inches tall, came to a stop in front of them both.  It was blue, had wheels on its feet, stripes on its tail, and wore a jumpsuit with the Watch on its chest.  A visor slot slid up to reveal a blue face with black stripes and green eyes.  “Ben?”  Max asked with a watchful eye, wishing he had some plasma shooters loaded into the Rustbucket.  This was going to be a working vacation it seemed.

“Yup,” Ben nodded with a toothy grin.  “wanna see something cool?”  Not waiting for an answer, Ben zipped around, gathering up everything and putting it away in the winnebago.  As soon as he was done, Ben stopped in front of them both again, practically posing.  “Pretty quick, huh?”  The watch beeped before returning Ben to human form, and he dusted himself off.  “This is gonna be the best summer ever!”

“It sure will,” Max agreed, surprised at how genuinely he felt about that.  It’d been so long since he’d dealt with alien activity on Earth after all.

“It’s sure to be… interesting.”  Gwen nodded, heading back to the RV to find her book.  After all, she had a slew of learning to do.


End file.
